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The chopper tilted to the right. Holmes grabbed Marple’s seat cushion to steady himself.

“Holmes!” shouted Edwards. “Get back in your seat!”

Holmes held on to Marple’s arms. “Margaret, this is too risky. Let me go down instead. I’ll find a way to stall him, bargain with him.”

Holmes caught a reflection over Marple’s shoulder. The two sharpshooters were checking their scopes by aiming out the cabin window.

“The minute he sees you, he’ll get spooked and run,” said Marple. “Or kill you on the spot. I can get closer and get the drop on him.” She was speaking in her natural voice, calm and reasonable. “He doesn’t want to see you, Brendan. He wants to see his wife. Maybe all his threats to you were just a means to an end—and the end is Agnes. Look at me. I’m a credible distraction. If the shooting starts, I promise I’ll duck.”

The intercom crackled again. “Pad is clear,” said the co-pilot. “We’re on final approach.”

Holmes struggled to hold his balance as the chopper straightened out. He stared at Marple. “Margaret, this is insane!”

She grabbed his shoulders and leaned in close. “Look at me. This is the work we were born to do. You, me, and Poe. I haven’t felt this alive in a long time. And you haven’t either.”

“One minute!” shouted Edwards.

“Holmes!” yelled Poe from across the aisle. “Buckle in!”

The chopper banked hard for the approach.

“Admit it, Brendan,” said Marple, her eyes flashing. “This is better than drugs.”

CHAPTER 85

WHEN OLIVER PAUL stepped off the ladder onto Deck 4, Ron and Pete were waiting for him.

Paul looked up at the security cam over his shoulder. “Is this the angle?” he asked.

Pete nodded.

Paul looked across the deck at the two workers fussing around the pump chambers. “Still the same two guys?”

Pete nodded again.

Paul grabbed Pete’s wrist. He tapped their Apple Watches together to transfer the video Pete had recorded earlier.

Paul had considered trying to hack into the surveillance system and insert the video loop directly. But there were too many fail-safes to disable, even for a master craftsman. He would have needed admin access and a long list of security codes. That would have taken more time and more equipment. Hard to manage remotely.

So he had devised a shortcut—imperfect but workable.

The model and serial number Pete had sent earlier had given him access to the camera’s wiring and circuit board diagram. Nothing too complicated. Using a laptop and his Apple Watch, he had programmed an interface that allowed him to embed the video loop in the camera’s image processor, bypassing the live image it was now capturing. Paul called up the recorded video, then pressed a code on his watch screen.

A green checkmark appeared. Image sent.

There were hundreds of screens in Central Control. On one of them, a new video would appear. It would show two men working diligently near the pump chambers, with no indication that the activity had occurred an hour ago. The scene would be too mundane to attract any attention, even when the action repeated every sixty seconds. Paul was gambling that sixty seconds exceeded the average security worker’s attention span. With his long experience, he felt that it was a pretty safe bet.

Paul opened his case and unlocked it. Nestled in foam cushions were two of his customized stun guns. He handed one to Pete and one to Ron. He watched as they both moved deliberately toward the two workers near the pump chambers. The workers looked up at the same time and got quick jabs to the base of their skulls. They went down hard, twitching and unconscious.

Paul pulled out the foam lining in the case to expose two shaped charges of HMX, one of the most potent chemical explosives ever developed. It was impossible to obtain from the US military but readily available at the right price on Putin’s black market. Paul walked over and wrapped the charges like unbaked breadsticks around several of the pipes leading into the pump chambers.

The pipes were thick-gauge, their sections linked by a ring of pressure-driven bolts. As sturdy as they were, they were the weakest part of the system, and no match for a blast velocity of nearly ten thousand meters per second. The detonation would create a flood of oil and a wall of fire.

Of course, there were safety measures in place. At the first sign of any leakage, a panel on the wall would send a signal to Central Control, which would automatically shut down the circulation of oil to the affected pipes. But Paul had considered that too.

He opened the panel, raised his Apple Watch, and sent a discreet signal—no more complicated than adjusting the timing on a Garmin electronic watch. But now any rupture in the pump chamber would fail to register in the control room. By that time, fire would shoot through the system and oil would be spraying into the Gulf at a rate of thousands of gallons per second, with no way to stop it.

Of course, this was the worst-case scenario.